This map was initially created by Paul Hardy in his leisure time during February to August 2001.
The triggers to its creation were a combination of

My wife Margaret was Clerk to the Comberton Parish Council (3rd tier of local government), and wanted a
village map for various purposes such as a tree survey. Like all significant places, Comberton lies at
the intersection of four OS large scale maps!

Frustration with Ordnance Survey's map data licensing. At the time the parish councils
were not covered by the OS service level agreement with central government,
so when I looked into using OS data to produce a village map it would have been horrifically expensive
and dificult. OS also wanted payment every time the map was printed, which was unworkable.

I'd recently taken over as Product Manager for Laser-Scan's LAMPS2 mapping software,
so was interested in exercising it in a'real-world' project.

Minor updates were done in October/November 2002, at which point it was adopted by the parish council
and two large copies installed in the village (by village pond and near Meridian school).
A more major update and revised design was done in October/November 2006, while Paul was
working in the USA for ESRI (but visiting Comberton). It was updated again in June 2009, and again in July 2013.

The basic steps in the creation of the map were:

The starting point was to take as a base the out-of-copyright pre-war (mainly 19th century!)
Ordnance Survey County series maps. I could not use the first national grid series as it was (then)
still in copyright. The maps were obtained as A3 copies from the University Library
in Cambridge), and A4 sections were scanned on an HP scanner to give TIFF files.

Coordinates were then captured for up-to-date road centre-lines from GPS satellite
observations taken with my handheld Garmin eTrex GPS unit while cycling the road and track
network. These waypoints were downloaded as National Grid coordinates on
OSGB36 datum, to my PC using Gartrip software.

Some well-defined points selected from these positions were used as control
points so that the original raster map could be rectified by warping, to fit
the road network, using a projective biquadratic transformation

The resultant National Grid raster map was then vectorised by digitising from screen backdrop
to capture field boundaries, streams, etc, many of which were largely unchanged since
1911!

Amateur aerial photography was then taken with an Olympus XA2 and an Olympus
Mju II from a Cessna 152 at about 1000 feet (out of the open window!). These
images were used to update the vector map.

The final step was to add road names, places, and points of interest from my
local knowledge, helped by review comment from other villagers.

Thanks were due to Laser-Scan Ltd, for their
permission to use my company laptop computer, their Gothic LAMPS2 mapping software,
and other resources for this map creation project.
Thanks are also due to Scott Weslford for flying the Cessna for the aerial
photography. Thanks go similarly to ESRI Inc in Redlands,
California for use of my company laptop and ArcGIS software and services in carrying out
the 2006 revision and redesign, and subsequent updates.

The resulting map is intentionally free of Crown or other third party
copyright. Paul Hardy grants free use of this map for non-commercial purposes
which benefit the village of Comberton, provided that the copyright note and a link to this page is
retained. For any commercial use, contact Paul Hardy, 15 Kentings, Comberton,
CAMBRIDGE, CB23 7DT, paul at paulhardy dot net. Corrections of errors and ommissions are welcomed.

The current version is A3 landscape format, and includes two
images from the village sign, courtesy of Mark Bennet.
These images are available separately as Obverse and
Inverse Tiff files.

Local accuracy is around 10 metres. The coordinate system
is British National Grid (lower left of map is TL3755), with grid spacing of 500m.
This map is provided 'as is', based on best effort with limited resources and is not definitive.
If you want a definitive map, go to Ordnance Survey!

Archived older versions are available for the August 2001 version (7), the November 2002 version (8),
the Novermber 2006 version (9), June 2009 version (10), and July 2013 version (12) at my archive site.

The 'tea towel' A3 version was created in June 2009 to help St Mary's church in Comberton.
The aim is to give a free map tea towel as part of a welcome pack to all newly arrived residents of Comberton,
funded by selling tea towels at church functions. To order tea towels (cost £5+pp) contact Diana Dean on 01223 262813.